Murder Ballad Monday borrows a useful typology of ballad singers from folklorist Eleanor R. Long-Wilgus ( Her article (and it is worth reading as a perfect specimen of its sort) is "Ballad Singers, Ballad Makers, and Ballad Etiology." Here is how MBM (and Eleanor R. Long-Wilgus) see the types of ballad singers:
Perseverators - "who try to faithfully memorize and repeat the song they hear"
Confabulators - "who enjoy expanding and embellishing [a ballad] in order to make it more entertaining to their audiences."
Rationalizers - "who intentionally shape the story so that it conforms to their own esthetic or moral values."
Integrators - "who almost wholly [recreate] the song."
I want us to consider this in this listening assignment
Part One: The song of a runaway lady (This is a very old song - Child Ballad #200) Generally known as "The Raggle Taggle Gypsy" title variants include "The Raggle Taggle Gypsies O", "The Gypsy Laddie(s)", "Black Jack David" (or "Davy"), "The Gypsy Rover," or "Seven Yellow Gypsies." "Definitely in the top five Child ballads in terms of widespread popularity, the Gypsies stealing the lady, or, to put it the other way round, the lady running off with the sexy Gypsies, has caught singers' attention all over the anglophone world for hundreds of years." Roud (quote from Wikipedia)
Here are three versions - notice the differences - in some (the older versions) the woman is a wife, in others a daughter:
These versions are close to those that Child collected:
And finally This, closest perhaps, to the Koerner, Ray and Glover version:
Bob Dylan - "Tin Angel" ( This song shows the evolution of the Child #200 story. There are also tropes here that connect to Child Ballad # 67 "Jack Orion" and Child Ballad #68 "Young Hunting" or "Henry Lee." Dylan probably did not get the tropes he connects to directly from the collection but versions of the ballads that abound as rendered by groups like Pentangle and interpreters like Nick Cave and P. J. Harvey.)
This version contains all of the major elements of the song and both expands and transcends the constraints of the song(s) the singer used the central story elements to prompt this new story.
Are these songs in the Child #200 Family?
Plenty of novice students of ballads would consider this the "default" version of Child #200 in 2014: This is because Roger McGuinn's Folkden with it's growing number of songs and ballads is providing the source material for musicians addressing the old folk songs that McGuinn presents with chords and the simplist possible arrangement. It is as though he is trying to create a generic, default version of each of the songs..
By contrast here is an almost modern song, an unauthored sailors' song from the early days of the
20th Century. The singer in this version attempts to play the song exactly true to the original earliest known text:
And here is a version that is almost identical, almost certainly based on McGuinn's version - yet it is very different. What do you think?
Rolling Down to Old Maui - Todd Rundgren -
Now think of the typology - does it make any sense? Are there degrees of adaption and manipulation of traditional texts that balladeers practice? What are the sources of the various impulses that guide some balladeers to attempt to create a "pure" rendition of the song, while others manipulate the song to better entertain their audiences and others re-interpert the song to reflect their political or moral views, and others completely refashion the song into a form that retains elements of the traditional ballad embedded in a new narrative?
And, oh - here is another Point of View on the Kamchatka to Maui voyage with added lyrics.
There are lots of popular songs that are, often unbeknownst to the popular audience, reinterpretations of traditional ballads... for example:
Perseverators - "who try to faithfully memorize and repeat the song they hear"
Confabulators - "who enjoy expanding and embellishing [a ballad] in order to make it more entertaining to their audiences."
Rationalizers - "who intentionally shape the story so that it conforms to their own esthetic or moral values."
Integrators - "who almost wholly [recreate] the song."
I want us to consider this in this listening assignment
Part One: The song of a runaway lady (This is a very old song - Child Ballad #200) Generally known as "The Raggle Taggle Gypsy" title variants include "The Raggle Taggle Gypsies O", "The Gypsy Laddie(s)", "Black Jack David" (or "Davy"), "The Gypsy Rover," or "Seven Yellow Gypsies."
"Definitely in the top five Child ballads in terms of widespread popularity, the Gypsies stealing the lady, or, to put it the other way round, the lady running off with the sexy Gypsies, has caught singers' attention all over the anglophone world for hundreds of years." Roud (quote from Wikipedia)
Here are three versions - notice the differences - in some (the older versions) the woman is a wife, in others a daughter:
These versions are close to those that Child collected:
Plaxty - "The Raggle Taggle Gypsy"
Koerner, Ray and Glover - "Black Jack Davy"
And here is a Hillbilly version - the runaway is a daughter in this version. So ballad singers change the meaning in major ways. Why?
The Carter Family - "Black Jack David"
And finally This, closest perhaps, to the Koerner, Ray and Glover version:
Bob Dylan - "Tin Angel" ( This song shows the evolution of the Child #200 story. There are also tropes here that connect to Child Ballad # 67 "Jack Orion" and Child Ballad #68 "Young Hunting" or "Henry Lee." Dylan probably did not get the tropes he connects to directly from the collection but versions of the ballads that abound as rendered by groups like Pentangle and interpreters like Nick Cave and P. J. Harvey.)
This version contains all of the major elements of the song and both expands and transcends the constraints of the song(s) the singer used the central story elements to prompt this new story.
Are these songs in the Child #200 Family?
Plenty of novice students of ballads would consider this the "default" version of Child #200 in 2014: This is because Roger McGuinn's Folkden with it's growing number of songs and ballads is providing the source material for musicians addressing the old folk songs that McGuinn presents with chords and the simplist possible arrangement. It is as though he is trying to create a generic, default version of each of the songs..
And How about this one? (below) The story is identical but is this in the Child #200 family or not?
Rodney Crowell - Leavin' Louisiana
Part Two:
By contrast here is an almost modern song, an unauthored sailors' song from the early days of the
20th Century. The singer in this version attempts to play the song exactly true to the original earliest known text:
Roger McGuinn - Rolling Down to Old Maui -
And here is a version that is almost identical, almost certainly based on McGuinn's version - yet it is very different. What do you think?
Rolling Down to Old Maui - Todd Rundgren -
Why is a verse left out of this version?
Now think of the typology - does it make any sense? Are there degrees of adaption and manipulation of traditional texts that balladeers practice? What are the sources of the various impulses that guide some balladeers to attempt to create a "pure" rendition of the song, while others manipulate the song to better entertain their audiences and others re-interpert the song to reflect their political or moral views, and others completely refashion the song into a form that retains elements of the traditional ballad embedded in a new narrative?
And, oh - here is another Point of View on the Kamchatka to Maui voyage with added lyrics.
There are lots of popular songs that are, often unbeknownst to the popular audience, reinterpretations of traditional ballads... for example: